maggie beegee: March 2010

This Post was originally suppose to be posted on Hannah's and Spencer's birthday.....

This is what I was doing 3 years ago today.

About this same time.

This is the story of that day.....

Actually, this is the story of 2 special little ones who joined our family that day.

We knew from early on in this pregnancy that this delivery would be our most eventful.

Hannah came first and tried to make that first cry that every mother waits to hear.

Hers was more like a kitten mewing.

She was immediately worked on to get her intubated.

You see, Hannah was born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

She had a hole in her diaphragm that had allowed some of her organs to develop within her chest cavity.

In turn, those organs pushed her left lung up and her heart more toward the center of her chest.

When Hannah was born, her left lung was about the size of a quarter.

Her intestines and her stomach took up space in her chest.

This was all I got to do to hold her before she was whisked off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

When Hannah was 4 days old, the doctors decided to operate.

They said she would not get better until they did.

They locked the NICU down for 3 and 1/2 hours while they performed her surgery bedside.

The doctor came to see us and reported that things had gone well. They had put a gortex patch on her diaphragm to repair the hole. The surgeon told us that if she made it past her toddler years without tearing the patch, she wouldn't need to have another surgery.